Towards Advanced and Interactive Web Perspective View Services

Abstract

Abstract. The Web Perspective View Service (WPVS) generates 2D images of perspective views of 3D geovirtual environments (e.g., virtual 3D city models) and represents one fundamental class of portrayal services. As key advantage, this image-based approach can be deployed across arbitrary networks due to serverside 3D rendering and 3D model management. However, restricted visualization and interaction capabilities of WPVS-based applications represent its main weaknesses. To overcome these limitations, we present the concept and an implementation of the WPVS++, a WPVS extension, which provides A) additional thematic information layers for generated images and B) additional service operations for requesting spatial and thematic information. Based on these functional extensions, WPVS++ clients can implement various 3D visualization and interaction features without changing the underlying working principle, which leads to an increased degree of interactivity and is demonstrated by prototypic web-based client applications.

Image-based strategies for interactive visualisation of complex 3D geovirtual environments on lightweight devices

“…For the presentation of information to humans, the OGC proposes stateless portrayal services. For 3D portrayal, the Web 3D Service (W3DS) (Schilling and Kolbe 2010) and the Web View Service (WVS) (Hagedorn et al 2009, Hagedorn et al 2010) are proposed as different approaches that are both still in the early stages of the standardisation process. The major difference in the current proposals for the 3D portrayal services is the representation that they generate and what visualisation pipeline stages they implement to what extent.…”

“…stateless, loosely coupled, and autonomous. As service interface for the 3D rendering service, we propose the OGC standardisation proposal WVS (Hagedorn et al 2009, Hagedorn et al 2010. The WVS overcomes restricted visualisation and interaction capabilities of preceding proposals such as the Web Terrain Service (WTS, OGC discussion paper) and its successor, the Web Perspective View Service (WPVS, OGC-internal draft specification).…”

Near Real-Time Semantic View Analysis of 3D City Models in Web Browser

“…The results describe how a large fraction of the view is covered by each of the object types listed in Table 2. This approach has some similarities with the concepts of "object id layer" and "mask layer" shown in [13], effectively obtaining "masks" for objects belonging to each object type. The viewer was modified to realize the semantic view analysis functionality, with the following most significant changes: (1) individual RGB colors were assigned to each of the 1st and 2nd level city objects (see Appendix A for colorization scheme), (2) the rendering and model illumination functionality were modified to allow for the production of pixel counting compatible image, (3) the pixel counting method (described in detail below) was implemented, and (4) the user interface was modified, including the results plotting function and a simplified keyboard based 1st person navigation for moving in a larger model.…”

“…Service oriented architectures and server-side processes (e.g., server side rendering) have been suggested to improve performance on client devices that have limited computational capabilities [12]. Additional features have also been introduced to server-side visualization [13]. As the performance of consumer hardware has improved, it has become increasingly common to realize even the demanding applications directly in the browser, including both analysis and rendering tasks [14].…”